


Tonight's Story Brought To You By...

by ohjustdisarmalready



Series: The Outsider Campaign [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, friendship?, introductions fic, no context needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-11 23:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: pizza bard introduces his party. It's a fun afternoon.





	1. | pizza bard

**Author's Note:**

> If you're stumbling in here completely blind, uh, good luck? [here](http://hahanoiwont.tumblr.com/post/177739343199) lives a quick and dirty intro. My tag [here](http://hahanoiwont.tumblr.com/tagged/pizza-bard) explains more thoroughly who the fuck this is. But tbh, I don't think you need to know to read this?
> 
> For the rest of you, here it is! By popular demand and because I love my party, here are introductions! There's gonna be a prologue and then a chapter per party member.
> 
> If you know me irl, skip from here to the fic and live in mystery. For everyone else, the tree he's talking to is one he planted in the spot where his adopted brother's foot was last on mortal soil. He comes back to visit it as much as possible. It's like 1600 years old now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We fell sick for one another, may we never find the cure   
> You can handle my best easy, I can try to handle yours

Well, he’s finished the pizza delivery that pulled him away mid-adventure. It wasn’t as exciting as he’d hoped for, really, but it was nice to travel again. See Lairalei, check in with a couple folks, get updated on his other deliveries. And taking a step back from his adventures was good for him, he thinks.

He needs to go back and get his ID back from where he snuck it into Mendax’s pack before leaving. He’s really gotta have that. And really, he may not have the most accurate sense of time from his party’s perspective, but he hasn’t been gone long at all, he doesn’t think. A few days, maybe. Not much more. He well might come across them still on the islands where he left them. With luck, they’ll just be wrapping up the whole pirate revolution, and he can swing back in for a while longer before he really needs to get back to work.

He should really get going if that’s what he wants—time won’t wait for him. And he will get there soon! There are just a couple of stops he needs to make along the way.

* * *

 

He can see the “Alberchee Tree” long before he gets to it, first the towering tip of a tree visible from between leaves, and then, as the surrounding trees get younger and smaller, great boughs and its own colorful silhouette. It’s huge, for a birch tree. Absolutely massive.

It’s not much different from how he remembers it. Large. Majestic. The grove is greener and more beautiful than the rest of the woods around it—though that might be his own bias. The tree itself is healthy and strong. The clearing is quiet and the footpaths are thin. The nearby villagers don’t much disturb the sanctity of this one beautiful place.

“Hey,” he says quietly, as he gets close. There’s no need to shout; his old friend is patient.

The wind rustles the leaves. A storm is coming; these are always the best times to visit.

“Yeah, fine. It’s been a while. You’re getting big, aren’t you?” Big and harder to get to. There wasn’t originally a hill under the tree, he doesn’t think, but the roots have built up and the soil has washed out until his old friend was left to stand on a throne of its own support.

He climbs between smaller roots and scrambles on top of a larger one for a bridge towards the center. Some day these root structures are gonna get too large for him to navigate so simply—but then again, he’s always said that, and they haven’t yet.

“Are you past the age where I can comment on you growing? Now any bigger is gonna be too big?” he muses. He taps the root with his foot. “Nah, I think you look good. Couple hundred, couple thousand days old and you’re growing just fine! Locals leaving you alone?”

He’s in arm’s reach of the trunk, now; it’s just a tricky hop that brings him over a gap in the roots to get there.

Not that he much minds falling—there’s a cozy little cove down there where the ground has washed out. It’s generally pretty warm and dry in any weather, on account of the bigass tree protecting it from the elements. If the deliveryman doesn’t mind sleeping on dirt—and he doesn’t—it’s a nice place to stay a night.

Hell, if the storm comes in like it’s threatening to, that’s where he might be tonight.

It’s still a hassle to have to scramble over roots after a whole long hike.

“You make this more difficult than it needs to be, old friend,” he addresses the tree. It isn’t a bad thing—trees grow, and healthy trees grow large. He’s very glad it’s thriving. But if he weren’t familiar with all the right places to put his feet, he’d be healing a lot of his own twisted ankles.

It does keep this place safe if he were ever to need to hide, though. He never has needed to—nothing in this grove has ever sought to harm him; or at least, nothing that still walks the earth.

He makes a leap towards a blind crevice in the trunk, just barely catching it with one hand and hauling himself up from there. Where he stands at the first junction, the trunk splits into three, which is nice—threes are a good number.

He can also see the most convenient handholds from here, which seem to grow on the inside of the branches for no conceivable reason. Some of his handholds are dead branches, so it always pays to be careful, but it’s really the next best thing to a ladder.

Well, maybe that’s a bit ambitious.

If he were to put “ladder” and “scaling a birch tree with no handholds” on a list, his old friend’s interior branches would be between the two. He can think of some things that would be above them.

He considers the branches above him. These ones have changed some since he’s last visited—it’s been a while. There’s one new bough in particular that he’s not a fan of.

“You really had to grow one right there? That’s where my body goes. I can’t get to the one above it if I can’t go through there,” he complains.

The tree is unmoved. It will grow as best befits it, he supposes.

“Look, I’ll go around it, but I really need you to start considering me in your growing plans. You’re very inconsiderate when you’re putting all these little twigs in my way. I have to be really careful not to break them,” he tells it. “You don’t even get any sunlight on this one! You’re blocking your own branches. Where’s it gonna grow? It’s gonna become another one of these little stunted guys, and I’m gonna use it as a foothold. You’re smarter than this.”

The wind must be blowing particularly hard—he’s protected in the center of the tree, but the branches surrounding him creak, and the largest one closes in a bit. He chooses to interpret it as a protest.

“Yeah, fine, I won’t criticize your growing decisions anymore,” he huffs, finally deciding on a way up. Probably for the best anyway, his old route was starting to rely on a few too many rotting branches. Now he can use the ones that won’t crackle at him.

The tree groans harder, and looking up, it seems like the sky itself sways. He can practically hear, _That isn’t what I meant and you know it._

“Look, sometimes I don’t have anything for you, okay? I don’t always have something exciting and insightful to tell you. Bitching about your branch arrangement might be the most interesting thing happening to me right now,” he says. It’s theoretically possible.

The tree continues to sway.

He pouts and boosts himself onto on exterior branch to check on the outside world.

No rain yet, but those stormclouds sure are headed in his direction. The other trees at the edge of the grove ripple in a strong gust, and he sways, too.

He sits on his branch, not too far from the ground. It wouldn’t much hurt to fall from this height, unless he landed badly, and he rarely lands badly here. He knows this tree better than he knows himself.

Haha.

Shifting his lute, he rests his head on the trunk.

“Yeah, okay. I do have a new story for you,” he says. “I think you’ll like this one. I do.”

He strums a bit, not really any tune in particular, and summons his little friends. Four will-o-wisps shine into existence, bobbing and dancing around him. They wait a moment for a command.

Eh. Not like he needs them to see.

He lets them do as they will. Two of them begin to twirl around each other while the others sail out of his sight, circling the tree to bob around the clearing. He likes to imagine they like being here, too—they sure do act like it.

“It’s a good one. I ran into some folks right when they got their call to adventure, so I got to see pretty much the whole thing,” he says, shifting his lute to his back. His little lights remain, chasing one another around the clearing.

He swings himself back inside the branches and keeps climbing.

“I’d been meaning to take some time off anyway, don’t wanna go bonkers and mess up my delivery quota,” he tells his old friend. The wind is still for the moment. “I got busy, though. Didn’t really start looking before—well, you don’t wanna hear about work.”

The tree is still.

“Sorry.”

He climbs in silence until he gets to another nice sitting branch. He’s getting to the height where he really shouldn’t risk falling, but he’s not worried. This is where the wind plays the best.

“Well, long and short of it, I had this bar delivery, and fuck all after it. Light stuff, you know? The bartender was this ex-adventurer, so I thought he might be fun, but he was pretty settled in.” He ignores the sitting-branch—he’s not out of breath yet. He carries on.

“Shit went down a bit, there was this guy and his daughter got kidnapped by goblins, you know how it goes. The heroes came out of the woodwork to form a motley crew of seemingly incompatible interests. Some intrigue, and they stuck together to solve the puzzle, making each other into better people and forging unbreakable bonds of companionship along the way. Actually, I think I stuck this one through almost to the grand finale,” he says. The leaves rattle—he imagines his old friend applauding.

Or gasping dramatically. _You mean you’re not gonna bullshit the end for once? Good for you! You know, I think this is real growth._

Sarcastic bastard. He pats the bark.

“Yeah, I was surprised, too. But they’re—well, let me introduce you, first.” This is his favorite part. Well, the story is also nice, but it’s the people who make it, isn’t it? And these ones are _fun_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Alberchee tree"=old birch tree->auld birch tree->auld birchtree->auld birchree->aulbirchree->allberchree->alberchee->alberchee tree.
> 
> I had to cut some from this bc it was just. boring. and irrelevant. But the rest picks up, because next chapter is Gary!


	2. Gary | Bisre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Said I'd be grateful just to sit, can you spare a little plank?   
> You said I found it when I got here, so you ain't got me to thank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the summaries are all gonna be lyrics of the song that's stuck in my head right now, is my decision. I split the verses between the party already. so there
> 
> In case it's confusing: pizza bard doesn't call people by their real names unless they're already dead. He considers this polite. But since no one gives him a name to use instead, he has to make one up when he can't get away with saying "hey, you." Chapters will be titles "Party member's name | name pizza bard has decided to use for them"
> 
> Bisre is the Gnomish equivalent of Joe.

“First off, there’s, hm, we’ll call him the tinkerer,” he says. The tinkerer’s true name is Gary and a whole bunch of other nonsense, because gnomes have a million names, but he’s never given a use-name. The deliveryman will just have to do what he can.

His old friend groans.

“Look, I’m not good at names, okay? You know this.”

The wind stirs the branches—this time the rattle is disapproving. _At least try_ , it seems to say. _I know you can do better than “the tinkerer_.”

He frowns. “If _you_ have a better idea, feel free to speak up. Anytime now.”

The wind sweeps through the forest around him. A leaf falls on his shoulder.

That one was a little below the belt. Trees can’t talk.

“That’s not fair of me. I’m sorry. We’ll call him…I just call him the Artificer in my journal, so…Arthur? Art? Arty?” He casts about for a name that will meet his friend’s standards. In case he’s already thought of something and forgotten about it, he jams himself in the space between two branches and flips through his journal.

His old friend shifts slowly side to side.

“You’re right, Arty sounds weird for him,” he says. And it doesn’t take much rearranging to go from that to Gary. “What about, uh, Bisre? Is Bisre any good?”

The branch he’s leaning on creaks. Bisre is a nice, solid Gnomish name.

“Bisre it is, then. Bisre is the first one I met—good thing, too. I’d been hoping to run into him.” He pushes off the trunk and keeps climbing, eyeing a growing branch. It’s just getting to be strong enough that he thinks he can use it without hurting it…

“Nothing nefarious, of course. I’m harmless. I was just looking for, you know.” He goes for it. The branch holds his weight. “Someone interesting. They say he’s, uh.”

He peers past the branch. All of his little will-o-wisps are dancing around the clearing below, save one which is sailing through the air in loops and twists. No one else is in the clearing, and certainly not in earshot.

 “They say he’s a pretty, uh—a pretty loyal guy. Like, once you’re his friend he doesn’t leave you behind.” He keeps moving, not looking past the next handhold. “Not that that’s, you know, it’s not like that’ll mean anything for me. But I figured, maybe it’d be nice to hang out with someone like that for a while. You know? He seems like a solid dude. He used to be a toymaker. I was curious.”

The leaves rustle in the wind.

“Don’t laugh at me! I make friends too, okay? I meet people! Maybe my adventurers aren’t always, always—genius prodigy superstars, or whatever, but I like them! And Bisre’s a cool guy!” He huffs—and then realizes he’s defending his social habits to a tree. His favorite tree, but still.

Well, no one saw him.

“Okay, so Bisre. He’s an artificer, right? You’d love him. He’s, look, I know you’re a smart cookie,” he raps his knuckles on the bark and pauses for a moment to assess his next handhold. These ones have been getting pretty old, he doesn’t want to break anything.

The wind shifts and one of the branches overhead makes a slight movement. It’s a bit high for him to reach. He eyes it dubiously.

“Don’t make me jump for it at this height, bud, I don’t wanna do that.” He stands on his last solid foothold, leaning gingerly between delicate baby branches and the trunk. It’s hard not to put too much weight on anything.

It’s an awkward angle, but he thinks he can manage a good grip. He might have to twist a bit, though…if he could get a bit more height, he’d be able to make it no problem.

The tree provides still, solid support. There aren’t a lot of branches he really trusts around here…

“You wound me, old friend—or you’re about to,” he says, and jumps for it.

The wind must change, or the branch was more flexible than he was expecting, because it’s at a more feasible height as soon as he’s off his foothold. He’s able to vault himself right on top of it with no trouble. He’d rate the jump at approximately a 22 on a 20-point scale.

“Fuck yeah,” he says, and, “anyway, Bisre. He’s like, crazy smart. It’s so cool. Fucking bonkers, as the kids say—do the kids still say that? Is that what they say when they see you?”

He can’t resist the urge to bounce a couple of times on the branch, which really is very flexible. Seems sturdy enough, though. It’s been too long since he’s been up this high.

“He’s pretty old, anyway. Like, really old, for a gnome. I think? Or just, _way_ the fuck stressed out. I think he had a daughter, and he lost her? Somehow?” Honestly, he doesn’t know shit about gnome aging. Gary seems old-ish? Spry, though. Who knows?

The daughter thing isn’t really something Gary has told him about. He just found that one locket and made some assumptions off that.

Actually, that’s a fun story. His old friend will appreciate it. It’s not the whole party’s story, or not yet, but Gary’s story. He likes Gary.

He takes a moment to kick back, so he can tell it right. Gossip is an art form.

“I have a whole theory for that. See, this famous inventor dude, the guy whose stamp is on this one locket we found, and it has G—Bisre’s daughter’s picture in it? But the guy whose stamp is on the locket, he’s the Empire’s Grand Inventor,” the deliveryman explains. The tree shifts.

“Yeah, I guess they have one of those? I think it’s just an official title for whatever artificer the Empress likes.” He doesn’t really pay attention. Why bother?

“But! Last I knew, Bisre was the Empress’s inventor buddy. And the Empress, the one we’ve got right now, she’s pretty new, actually. Her mother died, she’s good friends with one of the royal advisors, now there’s a whole new rotation of royal what-have-yous and a baby Empress on the throne,” he says. The leaves rustle softly in what he is choosing to interpret as interest.

“Exactly! So I got to thinking, hey, wasn’t Bisre the guy who invented glass, actually? And wasn’t he the old Empress’s buddy, a while ago? And then when I wasn’t paying attention, I dunno if it was the new Empress or some advisor or who actually did it, but someone offs the old one and puts this kid on the throne, yeah?” He jumps to his feet and paces the length of the branch, gesturing along.

“But see, the thing is—the things _is_!” He points to his old friend’s trunk emphatically. “Bisre would have been close to the Empress. I don’t know why they needed to kill her—I thought she was pretty cool—but there’s no way it was on the up-and-up. So Bisre, he knows something is up, right?”

It makes sense. And it explains so much, there’s no way it can _not_ be true.

“So they need him gone. They don’t just need him gone, they need him quiet about it. And if everyone who supported the old Empress is just dead suddenly, well, then people ask questions. And! Bisre’s a quirky guy, people are gonna notice if he’s just gone, right?”

The leaves continue to rattle and shift in anticipation—his old friend has always been a fan of conspiracies.

“Right. So what they really need is for him to retire and shut his gob until they can get him out of the spotlight and kill him quiet-like. But Bisre, he’s a tough cookie. Cleverer than they give him credit for. You look at him and you think he’s got his head in the gears, but he _sees_ things,” the deliveryman says, gesturing at his eyes.

People with pupils are strange and frightening.

“Actually, it’s, it’s pretty inconvenient how much he notices. It can be a little disconcerting. He looks at you with those old man eyes…” he muses. Gary is at least decently polite, but he does tend to look right in the deliveryman’s eyes in that hair-raising way people do. Rude, is what that is. It’s just rude!

Now the leaves sound more like they’re laughing at him.

“This is my story! If I say his old man eyes are creepy, they’re creepy, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

He raps his knuckles on the bark. The sound is hollow, to indicate his lack of victory in this. His old friend is still laughing at him.

“You’re terrible. This is terrible,” he says, and falls gracefully back to sit on the branch.

He rests a moment, far above the ground, while the wind passes and the leaves calm down. They shift back to shelter the tree and him in it from the surrounding woods.

He smooths a hand down papery bark.

“So, I think they got his kid, is the thing,” he says. “I think they got his family, and if he talks, they disappear.”

His old friend is quiet. His tail hooks around a branch.

“Rough situation, isn’t it? Adventurers don’t come from happy stock much.”

He breathes, and sighs, then sits up straight.

“Well, a good story never did come of no conflict. So now Bisre, I don’t know if he made a deal with them or if he’s on the run, but he’s a fast mover far as I can tell. Keeps a low profile, helps where he can, yeah? And he keeps his family in his heart, if he can,” the deliveryman says. It will never do to dwell on sadness—such is life. He brushes his hand one more time on rough-smooth-rough bark before pushing himself to his feet. He keeps climbing.

“Still makes no sense to me that they didn’t get him on their side _before_ offing his Empress friend. Seems like the guy who invented glass should have a little more job security than that,” he says. “But maybe that’s why they didn’t kill him. Well, that and his cooperation, probably. And the collateral.”

He shrugs. He’s not a fan of killing anybody; he hardly knows what people are gonna fight over. Just that they will fight, sooner or later, and then they’ll stop fighting again. Personally, he thinks they might do it because they’re bored.

“That’s Bisre’s story, though, good as I can tell. He won’t talk about it—I mentioned him being the fancy inventor dude way back when and he said he didn’t know what I was talking about. Won’t even take credit for the glass thing, and I thought he was really proud of that,” he says. “I bet he kills this new high inventor guy, ‘fore the adventure’s over. Can’t say he hasn’t earned it. Would be fun to see Bisre happy, too.”

His old friend creaks. _What’s he like usually?_ Or something to that extent.

“Oh, what he’s like? Like, as a person? He’s, uh, he’s nice, I guess. Sort of intense under all the quiet, but he doesn’t show it. The type to let you think he’s all sane and well-adjusted, right?” He’s not sure how to describe Gary. “You can tell he’s a father. Got a kind of ‘I’m gentle but that’s because I’ve been through some shit’ vibe. Genius, absolutely. Like I said, he notices shit, too. Like a hawk. And he asks questions.”

A dry groan as the wind changes directions. Strange storm coming through, but then, it can get unpredictable up this high. He imagines his old friend saying, _Awkward?_

“Is it ever,” he agrees. “I ask him about his family and he thinks I’m talking about mine. Turns it all around and wants to know if he should be, I dunno, concerned? About my, what, deep, dark secrets? I don’t know what he wants me to say, I’m an open book. Told him a bit about you, actually.”

The whole tree shifts in seeming surprise.

“Not much, obviously. I’m not a quest point, he doesn’t really need to know anything about my actual life. But I figure, information for information, right? So I trade him sometimes. If he wants to know I’m adopted, well, not like I can forget.”

He keeps his face indifferent, not missing a beat in his upward climb. The tree groans loudly and he ignores it.

“Anyway, that’s Bisre. Fun dude, a lot more so than he’d seem on the surface. I like him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, he is entirely wrong about nearly every aspect of Gary's backstory. Gary did not invent glass, which was actually invented several hundred years ago by a different gnome; was never the Grand Inventor; and had in fact always been a toymaker until his love interest died in a factory explosion and his adopted son got kidnapped. Gary has been looking for him ever since. pizza bard is just wrong about a lot of shit, and mixing him up with other people for the rest.
> 
> He did wait to share any of his assumed backstory until he got more of it right, so he did appear to have a prescient knowledge of Gary's past, but that's just him getting lucky.


	3. Mendax | Marius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I stumbled on you sittin' on a bench beside the bank  
> By the river where the dam was, before the old town went and sank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time for our party's captain and de facto leader! He's also probably pizza bard's best friend. I'm not sure I covered him well enough, tbh. He's a really fun character, and I got a bit distracted with the story of the campaign. This chapter does give a little context for what the party does together, though!

“Let’s see, who’s next…” the deliveryman muses. He’d go in order of favorites, but really, they’re all his favorite. Except one. Mort is going last, if he goes at all.

Well, he is getting to be above the canopy a little. He’s too far inland to see the sea, but he can see the lake over yonder already, idyllic as always. Might as well go for his high-seas adventurer.

“Pirate guy’s exciting. Pirates are always fun, right?” he asks. The tree shivers in the wind.

_Pirates are never fun_ , he interprets. _Pirates are bandits and marauders who want to kill innocent deliverymen._

“Well, they aren’t all violence, all the time. The ratio of ‘times pirates have been fun and exciting’ to ‘times pirates have tried to kill me, personally’ is pretty good, I think,” he says. “‘fun pirates’ to ‘physically attacked me, not to be dissuaded by word, deed, or magic’ is like five to one.”

He gets the impression that his old friend does not believe him. But actually though, pirates have only seriously hurt him, like, “drag himself home because he can’t heal on his own” type of hurt him, like, twice.

Three times?

Probably not four.

“Look, let me check, okay? Can’t be more than one in every three…” he mutters, flipping through his journal a bit. He’s pretty sure he has a tally page for pirate attacks…

Aha! Yes, he does! Who’s the world’s most organized pizza deliverer? He is! He knew keeping a table of contents would help some day.

Maybe it would help more if it were not in the middle of his notebook, but hey, can’t have it all, right? And he didn’t think of making it until he was already halfway through.

Unfortunately, the tally page doesn’t help much, given that it’s more of a venn diagram. Each tally has its own little note qualifying its placement, too.

“Look, it depends on how you count it,” he explains. “Sometimes they start out trying to kill you and they turn out to be fun! Sometimes they try to kill you and they’re really bad at it! Sometimes you can get them to not try to kill you! You wouldn’t lump all those guys together with the ones who really want me dead, would you?”

Most of the time they see one guy alone and figure they can take him, but it’s not too hard usually to convince them that one messenger traveling alone isn’t worth the effort. So lumping them all in with the guys who just want to kill somebody for entertainment seems rude.

Also, one of his best friends is a pirate, now that he’s met Mendax. Mendax is a good guy who almost certainly wouldn’t ambush a defenseless civilian minding his own business.

Maybe a really rich one.

Nah, probably not. Mendax is good people.

“Pirate guy is pretty cool, though,” he tells his friend. “Only one in the party without darkvision, which must be rough for him. I help out where I can with that one.”

He nods out to the clearing where his little dancing lights are. Surprisingly helpful little guys, those ones. Even for someone with darkvision, it’s nice to be able to whisk up some little glowy fellows on demand.

“And, mm, he’s a halfling? Fun-sized. So that’s a good time—must be pretty helpful, as a pirate, right? Maneuverability, and shit?” The deliveryman has only recently been relearning what pirates need. It’s been a while since he’s hung out with a pirate crew. Being small does seem to work to Mendax’s advantage, though, despite how touchy he can be about it.

“Then again, he doesn’t like small spaces. Like, it’s a thing. Pretty fearless otherwise, but if he can’t get out of some place—actually, did I tell you I got arrested with this lot?”

He doesn’t think he has, come to think of it. This one’s a great party story, even if it doesn’t reflect how badass Mendax can be.

The leaves clatter, which he chooses to interpret as anticipation.

“Yeah, we were visiting Daleu—that’s around here, real big, mostly forest. They’ve got something about sacred wood…? But I don’t think you count for that one. Sorry, buddy.” He pats the tree’s trunk. He doesn’t actually know shit about Daleu wood from a political or a religious perspective, he just knows trees from trees. Trees as strong as iron are always gonna be valuable to someone, though.

“Anyway, they’ve got this whole thing going on—don’t let anyone in except for elves. Makes my life harder than it needs to be, let me tell you. Don’t they know I have places to be?” The Daleu Duchy is so inconsiderate to his needs, personally. Even visiting Aryll would be a hassle if he were to use main roads.

Which is pretty much why he doesn’t use main roads. But adventurers tend to, and they’d been sailing in, so there hadn’t been a lot of ways to hide themselves.

“We sailed right up to this main port city and they give us these medallion things, except there’s special ones for elves, I think? So the elves can go pretty much where they want, and everyone else can visit like a third of the city? I dunno, I split to do deliveries pretty much as soon as we got there. The whole ‘only elves allowed’ things is kind of bullshit,” he says.

Not that it’s the first time he’s been denied entry someplace, but this kind of out-and-out law is kind of sketchy. And makes his job harder. And now it’s affecting his adventuring! Can’t he have anything nice?

Well, he can’t imagine it’ll last long. Just something to wait out. Something annoying to wait out, to be sure, but this, too, shall pass.

The tree creaks. Yeah, trees probably aren’t much up to date on current events…

“So the Empire still rules over everyone, but there’s these three countries everything’s split into? ‘cept maybe some backwoods spaces, aarakocra villages, random islands. But the countries mostly rule themselves? Or they say they do but the Empress is really in charge?” He shakes his head. “Fuck if I know. Laws and countries and borders, why should I care? I’m not a citizen. What are they gonna do, arrest me?”

Well.

“I guess they do arrest me, at that. We were in Daleu…for…some reason?” He doesn’t really remember why Daleu, come to think of it. It seemed important at the time?

He shrugs.

“Quest stuff, probably. I think there was, we started out the quest getting sucked into this demiplane—gorgeous work, I think it must be natural magic. Gotta be, right? Too sophisticated to be manmade. And there was this hot guy, I’m thinking high-level sorcerer, serious planar magic goin’ on— _maybe_ demigod, but I’m thinking he’s just an unlucky bastard.”

Some folks have the bad luck to be born under a shady star, get powers that act more like curses. Or they attract the wrong kind of attention, and go full Dark Knight about it. Be the broody hero you want to see in the world, and all.

“Probably the tortured soul type, too. He takes tall, dark, and handsome to a whole new level, though, let me tell you. And he’s connected to this plane somehow, which says wizard to me, but I dunno, he’s got these _eyes_ …”

It’s the full buffet. Gabe is hot, completely uninterested in the deliveryman’s entire existence, and comes with his own demiplane to play with! The deliveryman so rarely gets to indulge in planar magic, especially not as part of his adventures—he’s having the _greatest_ time. Could do with fewer holy folks in the party, but Mendax is good for that, too.

“Actually, pirate guy got, I dunno, a bit kidnapped by tall, dark, and broody? He has this magic tattoo that lets him control wind, to some extent, though I gather he didn’t particularly want it. I think his old crew may have sacrificed him or something,” the deliveryman muses. “Anyway, you mention a higher power to him and he takes out the hard stuff. And he doesn’t have a problem with sharing.”

The deliveryman might not be one for drinking—or eating—but Mendax’s policy of a long drink every time gods or Gabe come up is a pretty solid one. And regardless of his personal inclinations, it would be rude to turn down the flask once it’s been offered.

And it’s kind of fun to feel a part of something. He’s started glancing towards Mendax automatically whenever some genuine bullshit occurs. And more often than not, Mendax is right there with him, already downing his weight in shitty beer.

“Anyway. This hot guy, we call him Gabe, but he calls himself the Outsider. Got some connection to this demiplane he lives in, and he keeps yoinking us from whatever we’re doing to monologue. He’s got an appreciation for drama,” the deliveryman continues. The Outsider’s dramatic fucking exits—and entrances—are honestly the best part of visiting the Void.

“Makes me think his whole ‘Ohohoho look at me I’m evil but I know what’s best for you’ schtick might just be bullshit, actually—he’s real cryptic, and I thought maybe that was a curse keeping him from talking about shit at first, but I think he’s just like that.”

It would not be the first time the deliveryman’s seen a genuine hero, the real idealistic sort, turn to moral gray areas and think they’re so _obviously_ the worst thing in the world for it.

Taken a few steps further, getting massive power but being unable to help with what you really wanted to? Being too late to save your friends, your lover, yourself?

The Outsider may very well be putting on a show for them, if he thinks “vaguely evil and omnipotent” is what it’ll take to get these adventurers to save the world. Or to keep them from self-destructing before they can even really start.

It’s ridiculously tempting to hover over your party the whole adventure, swoop in and save their foolish asses whenever they get in over their heads, give them a couple of firm pushes to start becoming the heroes you know they can be. And when their foundation is solid, they’ve begun to start trusting and relying on each other, you want to make sure they survive the crucial first steps, don’t you? Or! _Or_ they keep missing things, they’re so blind, it’s so _obvious_ what the answer is, but they’re just not putting the pieces together and it’s _killing you_.

So yeah, you step in, leave a couple clues, make a couple vague and mysterious statements, vanish before they can figure out why you’re there in the first place, and there it is, all of a sudden you’re the overdramatic, probably-evil asshole and they go for their weapons every time you show up. Which, yeah, don’t trust anyone, be on guard, and all, but it’s still kind of hurtful when they do it to _you_. You’re just helping! You just want them to be happy!

The deliveryman has, perhaps, some sympathy for the Outsider’s position. At least enough that he’s not about to fall for Gabe’s edgy shit.

These antiheroes, in his experience, tend not to be so far removed from heroes as they think they are. And there’s no one he’s ever met who’s completely immune to a redemption arc.

He sways a bit in the wind and blinks.

Hmm.

He’s sure gotten high up here while he wasn’t paying attention. He’s not sure he could spot someone on the ground from here.

Well, he could spot them if not for the leaves in the way. He’s far and above the canopy of the other trees, though.

He scouts out for a sitting branch.

“I was uh, I was talking about pirate guy, wasn’t I?” he asks. “Sorry, got a bit distracted there. To be fair, Gabe’s _really_ hot.”

His old friend sways. It’s dealt with a lot of his shenanigans in its life.

“Yeah, but the story. Gabe has this nice table of Daleu wood, tells the story of the quest as it goes forward, right? And everybody’s got a special chair at it, got their name in their native language and everything. I think that’s why we went to Daleu?” Honestly, he’s lost track a little bit, but his old friend will hardly mind.

A few branches crackle. Actually, that one looks alright to settle on, if he’s got up as high as he wants to be. Nice and broad, not too many shoots coming off to poke him.

“Yeah, I’ve got a chair, too, actually—two of ‘em are cracked, that’s pirate guy’s and this other guy’s, but mine’s intact—I think it’s because I’m not planned out to die on this quest. Mine hasn’t got a name on it, just the, you know,” he gestures, and then realizes he’s not wearing his employee ID, having slipped it into Mendax’s pack before he left. It feels weird to be so far from it.

“It has the pizza symbol, anyway. Later on it had these—you know those little star-shaped seeds?” His old friend probably has no idea what he’s talking about. Fair. He’d had to dig to remember them himself. “Anyway, mine’s got some of those, and our dwarf’s got those dwarves without beards on hers, everyone gets a little symbol.”

He hasn’t said as much to the group, but he has his suspicions as to what they mean. Then again, Andale’s symbol indicates her origins, and Bryn’s her enemies, so it could be either? He’s crossing his fingers for the symbols being origin, or what they seek, or something. Maybe what they bring to the table, literally? But then the beardless dwarves are a whole thing, and Bryn kind of hates them…

Eh. It’ll come out in time.

“Anyway, that’s maybe why we were in Daleu. We came in on this ship we stole, ‘cause pirate guy is happier on the sea.”

So is the deliveryman, to be honest. He gets twitchy trapped all in one place, and at least on the ocean he can always be moving, if not very far.

“We get to this port city, which is the only one outsiders are allowed in, I think?” He’s not up on his politics exactly, but Mendax says it, so it’s probably true.

“We saw this—well, I don’t know shit about these new elven gods, right? I mean, I don’t know more than I ever knew, and I never knew more than I needed to, you know?” And besides, _gods_. He makes an effort to forget as much as possible.

“But yeah, we saw this—just a hint of a vision, just half a sight of the Wolf God.” His friend bows far, and the wind whirls through its branches dramatically.

He nods.

“I know, right? I get the party having some god things going on—means I’m probably out sooner rather than later, but you know, some adventurers do the god thing. I just don’t get why I could see him, too.”

Everyone knows something about the three elven gods, even someone like the deliveryman, who avoids divine interactions as much as possible. Two warring brothers, and their sister, the only sensible one of the bunch. They’d risen in the Time of Heroes—well, so had most gods. But they have nothing to do with the deliveryman, and he has nothing to do with them.

He shrugs.

“I guess I just got lumped in with the party. I’m not Godtouched, but a couple with the group are. Not pirate guy, though, I asked him,” he says. “Anyway, we couldn’t do much about that whole thing, so we just went through what we could of the city. Ran into this half-elf with a sugar momma, and she said the elven museum about the wood and all was a secret trap.”

The leaves clatter. His friend is laughing at him preemptively.

“Yeah, our dumb asses immediately go investigate. Learn about Daleu gods and Daleu wood, our cleric nearly gets our asses kicked declaring all these to be false gods and only dwarven gods are real,” he remembers. “Actually, I asked her about her gods just to be an ass.”

The tree shifts reprovingly, but he raises a brow and crosses his arms, lounging back on his sitting-branch.

“Hey, have I ever claimed to be nice? Anyway, we all get arrested—not super sure what for,” he continues. His friend creaks.

“Nah, I don’t think it was me. Being a dick is hardly jailworthy,” he says. At least, he’s pretty sure it isn’t. “Anyway, half the party was at the bar, getting serenaded by this old lady who keeps appearing at bars, but they get arrested, too. We get taken to jail—the cleric fights like hell, pirate guy freaks out ‘cause enclosed spaces, I’m a little pissed ‘cause they _stole_ my _lute_ , _and_ my employee ID.”

He takes a moment to frown, sitting up a little. The wind stirs up a bit—the Weave responding to one of her children’s ire.

“It’s not even useful to them! Why do they want it?” He gesticulates to make his point, and falls back to lie on the branch, crossing his arms and legs and staring at the branch above. “Ugh. I probably should have done something about it.”

His friend rustles in support. _What did you do?_

“Ah, not much, in the end. Cleric killed a guard, everyone breaks out. We get our shit back, make a little cult to our monk—Godtouched, little punk, we’ll get to him later—get caught again. But yeah, that was a good time.” Actually, Bryn had killed the guard by drowning him on dry land, which was a bit terrifying.

Warcasters. The most interesting or the scariest people, often both.

“Actually, that whole thing was kind of how I got into the situation I’m in now—some important pirate guy, King of the Pirates, wanted our pirate guy. Or maybe the Grand Admiral? I’m not sure which. I think they’ll turn out to be working together as the Grand Admiral is a corrupt bastard,” he opines. “Anyway, the Duchess of Daleu—not the Empress of the Empire, but the Duchess of Daleu; and I’m pretty sure she’s the first in her line not to be Godtouched, it’s hilarious—she sold us to him.”

His old friend creaks. _Sold you?_

He huffs.

“Right? I’m not hers to sell! But it turns out, when you travel with a pirate for…what…” he sits up straight again, taking his notebook back out to check. “Sixty days? Ninety? Seventy-two?”

His tally seems to be off, he has too many days written down. He hasn’t been with this group _that_ long.

“Anyway, when you’re openly with the pirate guy on a boat, you get counted as part of a pirate crew. So we get ‘sold’ off to the Pirate King, shipped off to the pirate islands.” He flips his book back into its holster. “But all these pirates on the islands, they love _our_ pirate guy, ‘cause he’s a cool dude, and they hate the other pirate guy, ‘cause he’s a douchebag that nobody likes. So they all start a pirate revolution.”

Because of course they do—Mendax is the hero. Levi is a jerk.

“Our pirate guy’s probably gonna end up on top of this. The good bet is he’s Pirate King and I’ll hear about his reign of terror later on and I will be so proud,” the deliveryman grins.

_That’s the story, then?_ his old friend must ask. _Not bad. I like the part with the pirates._

So does the deliveryman. What a coincidence!

“That’s the rough sketch. But I haven’t even finished with pirate guy! I’ve barely started. Let’s call him, what, Marius?” he proposes. It means, what, sea-something? Sea in Draconic, war-something in Primordial?

It fits Mendax, he thinks. Draconic for his spirit, Primordial for his control of the wind, given to him by the Outsider but made his on his own terms. And he sure is a force of nature, for all he claims to be a drunkard pirate.

The tree shuffles in place. His old friend is a nerd for things like this, there’s no question on the name. Ah, inspiration.

“So Marius, he has all his pirate stuff goin’ on, but he’s also just a cool guy. He makes acrobatics routines with me in our spare time,” the deliveryman says. “He’s _really_ good at flips and shit, I think that might be what he does for fun at sea. That might be why the pirate crews like him so much, come to think of it.”

It’s as good a reason as any. The deliveryman is well aware of the importance of doing fun shit in the day-to-day for team bonding; it can’t all be life-threatening experiences and shared trauma.

Well, sometimes it can. But the fun stuff is more, well, fun.

“I think the not being an evil douchebag part helped, too. Apparently that’s a problem with pirates nowadays,” the deliveryman muses. Such a trouble. “Or just pirate captains? Marius really hates that guy. And his old captain, too, but we killed him as soon as we hit the islands. Marius got a really badass one-liner off, too.”

And stole the dude’s hat. What a guy, Marius.

The tree is still, for a moment.

The deliveryman settles a bit and surveys what he can see.

The deep, proud woods of Daleu lie before him, peaceful and deadly as they ever are. Far off where his vision fades, and even beyond that, lies the sea and his party. They’re not moving, probably settling down for the night if they’re not dead on the shore.

They’re not. Theirs isn’t that kind of story.

“I hope he kills Levi,” the deliveryman observes.

His old friend leans to him.

“The pirate king. He’s a douchebag and I don’t care about airing his name,” he says, belligerent. Not that anyone can hear him in any case, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Mendax won’t need his well-wishes, though. Mendax is tough. The best thing about Mendax, probably—he’s selfish enough to keep himself alive, and hopefully, to keep his party alive before the “greater good.”

In the deliveryman’s experience, the greater good will survive, sooner or later. The heroes who die for it will not.

His old friend creaks.

“Yeah. I still hope they kill the bastard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it :) I didn't get as much of Mendax in as I'd like to, maybe I'll manage to sneak in more about him in the next few. He's a cool dude.
> 
> Unedited because I'm impatient rip


End file.
